EScorebooks? - Thoughts From an Aspiring Woodpusher

We all know that the Laws of Chess require you to record your games as you play them. How many of us keep those records?

I'm pretty proud at having, still, after more than 30 years, probably 90% of my tournament game records, and even some of my very early games before I became a tournament player in my teens. Its interesting to see these hand-written scores. You see not only my small progress as a teen, but almost as interestingly, historically in my mind, you see the change I made, early in my tournament career, when I switched from Descriptive Notation which I'd started out with in '78, to Algebreic Notation that I (and most people, I understand) use today.

But I'm contemplating a larger evolution today. All these games, about 200 of them now, are recorded, handwritten, in two notebooks. Historically I would take my game scores from the tournament, and reinscribe them into my notebook. They usually didn't look any better, really, but if I'd screwed up the score during the game at least this was cleaned up in my notebook. Of course sometimes I was lazy and didn't quite get around to it. So, this month as I got back into the game, I found (I knew I had them) about three tournaments worth of game scores I'd not put in the notebook. I set about inscribing them in so I could get ready to inscribe the games I'm playing now - my "modern" games. So, I was working at that point to get my notebook up to 1999. Then we'd be ready for the games of 2011!


I've been taking a look at chess database programs, specifically Scid, in order to keep track of things. I'd been handwriting my games for thirty years, but I saw that keeping games electronically, in databases, would enable me to do some very interesting queries and filtering. How many games had I won with 1. d4? 1.e4? In as much as I play recognized openings, what is my most played? My most successful? Additionally, keeping game scores electronically enables easy playback, right on the computer screen. No toting around even an analysis set. And, of course, the database can be coupled with a chess engine for analysis.


It sounds like its a great winning situation, doesn't? Well, if you talk to any Librarian or Archivist these days they're worried, I think, that future Librarians and Archivists will find a vast amount of records lost or unreadable starting from the last half of the last century. Computers of future eras may not be able to read old formats, etc. In some cases this has already happened! Archvists that I know tell me that no one knows what to do about this! I'm thinking hard if I want to put my records in a format that sometime in the future I may not be able to read. Eleven years ago when I last played I had the option to put my games in a Mac program called ExaChess. I didn't end up putting my games in this program. I still have it, but its an open question as I sit here if I have a computer capable of running the program!

As with anything else, perhaps, its your backup strategy that becomes important. In this case including a backup strategy that would print out the games I have in the database and put them in a file along with my handwritten games.

Do members of the club keep their scores for any reason, and if you do, how do you folks do it?

This is yet another thing that I didn't have to think about 30 years ago. :-)

-Doc Kinne

BCC Member, USCF #12186200

In Praise of the Machine? - Thoughts From an Aspiring Woodpusher...

Back in the early 80s I had, as a trainer, a Fidelity Chess Challenger 7 dedicated computer. A little bit of research seemed to show that it was rated, depending on the level, anywhere between 1100 and 1900. I figure 1100 was the 5 second response time and 1900 was the 24 hour response time. Tournament mode probably put the machine around 1350, and I think I can verify that based on the memory of my games with it vis-a-vis my rating at the time.

I think it could be agreed that one of the best ways to improve your chess is to play, and these days we have a wide range of options open to us.

From a machine perspective, its safe to say that the vast majority of commonly available programs out there can completely destroy a player like me, and I think that that may be true of most of us now. I was flabbergasted to see that some of these program's ratings were estimated to be above 3000. Wasn't 3000 supposed to be God's rating?

So, in installing chess engines on my computers, both for analysis as well as practice play, I wasn't all that worried about getting the "strongest engine." Oh, getting the strongest engine makes a lot of sense from an analysis perspective, I agree with that, but from a playing perspective, not so much, I thought. From a playing and practicing perspective it seems to me that you want stronger opposition, certainly, but you don't want opposition that you'll never win against. That gets discouraging. What I found interesting is that the chess engines I started trying - GNUChess, FairyMax V4.8, Scidlet V4.2.2 (Yes, I'm a Free Software Linux Geek. Moving on...) didn't seem to have "level" switches that I could see. There didn't seem to be an elegant way of hobbling the program. Everyone seemed to simply assume you'd want it playing at God strength all the time. Running the engines through Xboard, I managed to specify the depth level the engines would use. I found I could beat FairyMax at a depth level of 2, but am still working on a depth level of 3. Of course, these types of engines have a default depth level of 17, I think! FairyMax also had the advantage of not pegging my CPU.

What's your favorite program?

Computers, especially 30 years ago, were big practice deals because you could have an opponent anytime you wanted. These days another great option that is available is, of course, online play.

I'm divided when it comes to online play. Overwhelmingly my experience - and I can't claim much - is with FICS, the Free Internet Chess Server. I find most games online are played very, very quickly. I've never been a big speed chess player. OTB, it becomes a race to see if you can keep alive for longer than your opponent's flag stays up. Online you add issues of mouse clicks and lag into the mix. I've just not lept into it.

On the other hand, just like many things these days, I think a significant portion of the future of chess is online, and I'd love to see the US Chess community figure out a way of doing "official games" online. From what I understand, the USCF is trying to do this again. Their track record to date has not been good at this type of thing...and that discussion opens up whole 'nother can of worms, I'm sure!

What does everyone here use for online play, and what do you think are its best advantages?

Last, but certainly not least for members of the BCC, there is the option of challenging and practicing with your fellow club members! The value of this option cannot be discounted. Take advantage of it! Remember the Club is open Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for open house if you can make it. You may not find Bobby Fisher, but you'll probably find someone who can give you a challenging and enjoyable game.

-Doc Kinne

BCC Member, USCF #12186200